I
Had a Dream About You
All the cows were falling out of the sky and landing in the mud.
You were drinking sangria and I was throwing oranges at you, but it didnt matter.
I said my arms are very long and your head's on fire.
I said kiss me here and here and here and you did.
Then you wanted pasta, so we trampled out into the tomatoes and rolled around to make the sauce.
You were very beautiful.
We were in the Safeway parking lot. I couldnt find my cigarettes.
You said Hurry up! but I was worried there would be a holdup and we would be stuck in a hostage situation, hiding behind the frozen meats, with nothing to smoke for hours.
You said Dont be silly, so I followed you into the store.
We were thumping the melons when I heard somebody say Nobody move! I leaned over and whispered in your ear I told you so.
There was a show on the television about buried treasure. You were trying to convince me that we should buy shovels and go out into the yard and I was trying to convince you that I was a vampire. On the way to the hardware store I kept biting your arm and you said if I really was a vampire I would be biting your neck, so I started biting your neck and you said Cut it out! and you bought me an ice cream, and then we saw the UFO.
Scheherazade
Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lake and dress them in warm clothes again. How it was late, and no one could sleep, the horses running until they forget that they are horses.
It's not like a tree where the roots have to end somewhere, it's more like a song on a policemans radio, how we rolled up the carpet so we could dance, and the days were bright red, and every time we kissed there was another apple to slice into pieces.
Look at the light through the windowpane. That means it's noon, that means were inconsolable.
Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us. These, our bodies, possessed by light.
Tell me well never get used to it.
What would you like? Id like my moneys worth.
Try explaining a life bundled with episodes of this-swallowing mud, swallowing glass, the smell of blood on the first four knuckles.
We pull our boots on with both hands
but we can't punch ourselves awake and all I can do is stand on the curb and say Sorry about the blood in your mouth. I wish it was mine.
I couldn't get the boy to kill me, but I wore his jacket for the longest time.
We were inside the train car when I started to cry. You were crying too, smiling and crying in a way that made me even more hysterical. You said I could have anything I wanted, but I just couldn't say it out loud. Actually, you said Love, for you, is larger than the usual romantic love. Its like a religion. Its terrifying. No one will ever want to sleep with you.
Dirty Valentine
There are so many things Im not allowed to tell you. I touch myself, 1 dream.
Wearing your clothes or standing in the shower for over an hour, pretending that this skin is your skin, these hands your hands, these shins, these soapy flanks. The musicians start the overture while I hide behind the microphone, trying to match the dubbing
to the big lips shining down from the screen.
We're filming the movie called Planet of Lovetheres sex of course, and ballroom dancing, fancy clothes and waterlilies in the pond, and half the night you're a dependable chap, mounting the stairs in lamplight to the bath, but then the too white teeth all night, all over the American sky, too much to bear, this constant fingering, your hands a river gesture, the birds in flight, the birds still singing outside the greasy window, in the trees.
Theres a part in the movie where you can see right through the acting, where you can tell that I'm about to burst into tears, right before I burst into tears and flee to the slimy moonlit riverbed canopied with devastated clouds. Were shooting the scene where I swallow your heart and you make me spit it up again. I swallow your heart and it crawls right out of my mouth.
You swallow my heart and flee, but I want it back now, baby. I want it back. Lying on the sofa with my eyes closed, I didn't want to see it this way, everything eating everything in the end
We know how the light works, we know where the sound is coming from.
Verse. Chorus. Verse.
Im sorry. We know how it works. The world is no longer mysterious.
Wishbone
You saved my life he says. I owe you everything. You dont, I say, you dont owe me squat, let's just get going, lets just get gone, but hes relentless, keeps saying I owe you, says Your shoes are filling with your own damn blood, you must want something, just tell me, and it's yours. But I cant look at him, can hardly speak, I took the bullet for all the wrong reasons, I'd just as soon kill you myself, I say. You keep saying I owe you, I owe... but you say the same thing every time. Lets not talk about it, let's just not talk.
Not because I dont believe it, not because I want it any different, but Im always saving and youre always owing and I'm tired of asking to settle the debt. Dont bother. You never mean it anyway, not really, and it only makes me that much more ashamed. There's only one thing I want, don't make me say it, just get me bandages, Im bleeding, I'm not just making conversation.
There's smashed glass glittering everywhere like stars. Its a Western, Henry. It's a downright shoot-em-up. We've made a graveyard out of the bone white afternoon.
It's another wrong-man-dies scenario and we keep doing it, Henry, keep saying until we get it right... but we always win and we never quit.!
See, weve won again, here we are at the place where I get to beg for it where I get to say Please, for just one night, will you lay down next to me, we can leave our clothes on, we can stay all buttoned up?
But we both know how it goes I say I want you inside me and you hold my head underwater, I say I want you inside me and you split me open with a knife.
Im battling monsters, Im pulling you out of the burning buildings and you say I'll give you anything but you never come through.
Even when youre standing up you look like youre lying down, but will you let me kiss your neck, baby?
Do I have to tie your arms down? Do I have to stick my tongue in your mouth like the hand of a thief, like a burglary, like it's just another petty theft? It makes me tired, Henry. Do you see what I mean? Do you see what Im getting at?
I swear, I end up feeling empty, like you've taken something out of me, and I have to search my body for the scars, thinking Did he find that one last tender place to sink his teeth in?
I know you want me to say it, Henry, its in the script, you want me to say
Lie down on the bed, you're all I ever wanted and worth dying for too... but I think Id rather keep the bullet. Its mine, see, Im not giving it up. This way you still owe me, and thats as good as anything. You can't get out of this one, Henry, you cant get it out of me, and with this bullet lodged in my chest, covered with your name, I will turn myself into a gun, because I'm hungry and hollow and just want something to call my own. I'll be your slaughterhouse, your killing floor, your morgue and final resting, walking around with this bullet inside me like the bullet was already there, like it's been waiting inside me the whole time. Do you want it? Do you want anything I have?
Will you throw me to the ground like you mean it, reach inside and wrestle it out with your bare hands? If you love me, Henry, you dont love me in a way I understand.
Do you know how it ends? Do you feel lucky? Do you want to go home now? There's a bottle of whiskey in the trunk of the Chevy and a dead man at our feet staring up at us like were something interesting. This is where the evening splits in half, Henry, love or death. Grab an end, pull hard, and make a wish.
